Here It Comes ...
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Greg Sargent, The Washington Post - July 7, 2014
Rebecca Vallas and Shawn Fremstad, Center for American Progress - July 8, 2014
Looks like we may soon have a fight on our hands, similar to what’s been going on in the United Kingdom. There, the widespread, urban myth perception that massive numbers of people collecting disability benefits aren’t *really* disabled has been weaponized into policy, with results that are both tragic and ridiculous. Take a halfway decent idea … encourage disabled people to work if it’s possible … and implement it through contractors whose profit depends on cutting people off benefits, and you may get some savings, but you’ll also get human suffering on a grand scale.
If anything like this truly gets off the ground here in the U.S., one of my greatest fears is that disabled people who are less targeted as possible “cheats” will join in the witch hunt for other gray-area Disability recipients … people with less familiar, and more stigmatized conditions. It’s nice to think that when threatened, a diverse group of people will come together to defend their rights, but often, they subdivide instead and “eat their own”. I hope that doesn’t happen to us.
It’s not too early, either, for disabled people to learn more about the finances and politics of Social Security Disability, so we have rational arguments other than, “Don’t cut my benefits please”, if and when the axe comes out.